AT THE heart of privatisation is the drive for profits. Most of the services of the nationalised industries are essential to a better life - like cheap coal for the elderly and to run an efficient and safe electricity network; like steel for more hospitals like cheap and efficient railways; like advanced telecommunications to enhance our lives. But if these socially necessary sions don't make a profit, then, tough - they don't get the Tories blessing.
Instead of balancing society's resources to subsidise some areas with the wealth created in others, the nationalised industries are to be parcelled up and cast into a competitive market overlap, duplication and anarchy prevail in the quest for profit. So, thousand. The slim-down activities have radically altered working practices in all the plants, with a deterioralion of working conditions and safeMany areas of work traditionally under BSC contract have been or are about to be given to private contractors - mobile plant handling, scrap handling, re-lining, catering, security. Craft jobs like electrical maintenance could go this way too. Unity inside the plants is affected as a result of this fragmentation and the conditions of all these workers are no longer protected by BSC LILIOIS.
This is all part of the BSC plan to make the steel corporation lean and fit' in preparation for selling off the most profitable sections, what they call 'Phoenix projects' the BSC and private companies merge their activities into new joint companies. The aim is to get rid of overlap in production of more specialised and profitable steel like engineering steel, wire, rods and tubes.
In this rationalisation exercise the Government foots the bill for scrapping old and excess plant, redundancy decisions about and the quality have. are made profitable, crumble.
and houses;
recent legislation provisocial need.
needed.
Such a national possible if throat allowed terest charges. taxpayers expence, below its value.
Private
subsidiary Redpath Dorman wages and based Trafalgar House Through more redundancies are teared.
jobs.
new Iron and Steel Bill.
what type of technology will invade our homes and type of transport or energy system we will profit in mind, not what best suits us. Unbut socially needed services are left to deteriorate and The next Labour Government should pledge itself to overturn all which allows of the nationalised industries. Plans should be drawn up with the unions for a rational use of resources and the production of goods and services for Subsidies should be made available where these are plan is imprivate firms are able to cream off resources from the have nationalised industries or if cutprivate competitors are Wale resources handouts, repayment of debts and in- The Once this is done, at the private company walks off with the newly ra tionalised and profitable concern at firms like GKN (which paid £15,000 to Tory funds last year) and Duport took fat cheques for the shares bought by BSC in these joint ventures - f40 million for GN and f25 million for Duports. The BSC which produces structural steel, has assets estimated at £22 million. It is being sold to a private subsidiary of for a mere £10 million. The workers in Redpath Dorman Long have already lost 65 per cent of their 9,000 workforce and The Government is sinking £50 million into a merger between BSC River Don and Firth Brown in Sheffield, which will result in a loss of at least 1,100 This is just the tip of an iceberg, In February 1981, the Tories printed a The Government is no longer obliged by statute to keep a nationalised steel industry. towards industry controlled by those who work in it.
aimed smashing the collective unity of the trade union movement. The gas workers used this unity to threaten strike action show room sales. NUR members threatened against the Horwich and Shildon workshop The miners used their industrial muscle to stop pit closures. In each case the Government was forced Sadly the union leaders have organised this united dustrial action. Their concern has been to convince the Tories with *the power of argument, accepted slimdown agreements in the false hope that this will prevent hive-off shut-down. Just one year ago, Bill then minster Keith Joseph said this bill would ease the transfer of business to the private sector and permit an extensive rundown of the Corporation if that proves necessary.
Coal The Tories intend to try to smash the miners union through closures. Whether the hit list of pit closures is 30 or 50 strong is still to be revealed. Between 1947 and 1980, the number of pits shrank from 958 to 219, with a decline in the workforce from 703,900 to 232,000.
The 1981 miners strike halted the Tories hit list, but 11,000 jobs have still been lost in the last year through the backdoor of closing allegedly unsafe pits and through early retirement, without a recruitment drive or Investment i new bits. The conditions of miners are to be further attacked with Government privatisation plans.
Privately licensed pits will allowed to operate with up to 100 waiting like Bill Sirs for the big closure. Jobs and services are being whittled away all around us. TUC leaders total capitulation to the Tory offensive has to end. Resistance must be organised now through industrial action coordinated and led at at level. The Triple Alliance should be transformed from talks with the Tories, alliance to oppose redundancies, against closures and de-nationalisations. action British Telecom. The POEU has launched Telephones' campaign to oppose the to union circular, employed in British Telecom have been instructed to their opposition in a positive way This will initially take the form of a total one day stoppage of work They by all POEU members in British Telecom towards the end of October'. and followed by all unions in the nationalised industries.
workers, instead of the 37 under the 1947 Act. already stocks of 24 million tonnes to private investors and there is speculation that it will sell off the open cast mines. The NUM conference the Monopolies Commission Report this year will announce plans to hiveoff valuable NCB assets.
pit Private contractors and investors already leach off the nationalised mining industry. The Laurence Scott Electromotors workers drew attention to the dispicable Mr Snipe. There are many more like him who supply equipment and materials for the mining industry and reap fat profits from They include private contractors and private coal merchants who hover around the pit heads to pickings off the backs of the miners.
Health Public sector services too are hit by Thatcher's scheme be speculators, investors and financiers at our expense. Private medicine has time This national to a real fighting A good start has been made in employers' 'Hands Off In a recent and all demonstrate to Kings.
Useful reading:
This is an example to be don SEI The National Coal Board plans to hive-oft its huge already Minister, in July heard that privatisation of ajar.
Services make juicy Indeed, with these plans, Len Murray hopes 'the unions would behave responsibly and avoid a repetition of the 1978-79 winter of discontent.
turns reality upside down. A Labour government can only put muscle behind its plans for industry by promoting and supporting industrial action like that in the winter of discontent. Nothing else will convince the and force them to carry out plans for social need and job expansion If Labour includes planning re-nationalisation in manifesto, as it should, this has to be backed up with a commitment support the parliamentary actions of trade against job loss, privatisation and productivity strLabour nescaren Debarment Damoale Public or Private: the Case agains: Privatisation, 78 Blackfriars Road, Lonleached off the National Health Service for years, adding problems to an deteriorating service. July 14th this year saw a new twist. GeofFinsburg, the Junior Health announced SCICCEIVO ancillary workers jobs. Although total contracting out of cleaning, laundry and catering jobs is not yet planned, the door is now Within a week of this announcement, another came from the Social Department Health Minister, Geoffrey Fowler said that he was pleased to announce Government rejection of a proposal that we should pay compulsory private health insurance for our hospital treatment Instead, he explained that a special working party on the financing of the health service proposed to 'cement private provision into the system in such an irreversable way that a future Labour Government would not able to dismantle it'. Big deal! A health service geared to the rich and the consultants and not the poor, the nurses and the ancillary workers.
Socialist Challenge 4 September 1982
Challenge
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United Industrial Action Now. Defend Unions